Making the best of your resources

Since my last column, our director of human resources, Anne Leaver, has won a national training award for achievement.

This accolade is not only momentous to her, but also to the company, as we have all benefited from her training.

We have 18 managers taking part in her Management Development Centre, with a further 12 on the waiting list. It involves a lot of hard work, including appointing a mentor for each delegate. Most have chosen Anne, but our executive chef, Alec Summers, has chosen me - a decision I hope he will not regret.

This year's round of appraisals kicked off at the beginning of October. Next year, our focus is on training front-line staff, particularly our food and beverage division.

Our human resources team has come up with two courses: Raising Your Game, for food service, and Raising Your Glass for beverage service.

This is most important for the coming year, as we have just agreed to spend £1.4m on refurbishing our main restaurant, including adding a large bar, a new function suite and renovating two kitchens.

In the nine years I have worked here we have gone from having no bar facilities at all to seven bars. That means a liquor revenue of just over £1m a year and a significant change in customer profile.

We recently had the privilege of seeing Humphrey Walters, founder of Mast International and group chief executive of Inspirational Development Consulting.

Although he had many interesting things to say, he focused mainly on the issues of leadership, teamwork and survival in a hostile climate.

As a result, we will spend a day determining our codes of practice and our duties to our organisation.

Another learning experience for me recently was to visit the Scottish Police College with 10 of our staff, where a most informative trip in the traffic police training cars taught us about skids and reverse turns.

Although exhilarating, it brought home the importance of driving safely at speed - the role of police is more varied and skilful than I had realised.

I am now off to my own induction course on company culture. This gives me the chance to meet new recruits and give them my vision of the company, while they have the opportunity to relay their first impressions, which I find highly valuable. n

STEPHEN LECKIE is managing director of the Crieff Hydro leisure hotel in Crieff, Perthshire